Dictionary

deanimalize en · VERB

Etymology

From de- + animal + -ize.

Meanings

1. To make less like an animal or less full of animals.
   • Impersonal societies dehumanize themselves, maybe even deanimalize themselves. 1970, Oscar G. Mink, Bernard A. Kaplan, America's Problem Youth, page 82:
   • Even in aristocratic Japan and China, where until recently breasts were bound tightly to flatten them out, it was acknowledged that this practice attempted to deanimalize the woman and to make her less obviously an object of lust. 1979, Daniel G. Freedman, Human sociobiology: a holistic approach, page 107:
   • He also acknowledged that if, according to the latter-day convictions of Joshua, the only proper and real object of worship was the True, the Beautiful, and the Good, as embodied in the lives and works of men, the tendency of such worship was to deanimalize them, to lift them up into a state in which they would be most likely to recognize the Rev. Mr. Benton's personal God, in whom the attributes of worth were infinitely realized. 1892, Hans Stevenson Beattie, Joshua Wray, page 181:
   • Generally we deanimalize our image of meats like pig and cattle by giving them terms like "pork" and "beef". 2002, Brett Cooke, Human Nature in Utopia, page 160:
   • While talking about the stray dogs of Kolkata, a city that has not yet deanimalized its public spaces, we need to imagine a very different spatial relationship between nonhuman and human animals. 2019, Suvadip Sinha, Amit R. Baishya, Postcolonial Animalities:
   • If we are compelled to eat animal foods, owing to climactic or economic conditions, we are to use them only in small quantities and also with special caution in order to deanimalize or vegetalize them with proper culinary preparation and efficient nutritional combinations. 2017, William Shurtleff, Akiko Aoyagi, History of Macrobiotics (1715-2017):

Forms